SteamOS was never designed to be a general desktop distro. It's highly specialized, immutable and outdated in many aspects.

Why do people keep saying this when objectively better distros already exist?

Like the title says. I'm gonna be a Windows refugee.
I use my desktop mainly for Gaming and surfing the web. Mostly Steam games, but a couple of Epic ones too. I play with Xbox One controllers for both, for most games, and i've heard Linux can have issues gaming peripherals. As well as having issues with Nvidia video cards (which i also have).
Never used Linux before (as a operating system), so i need help with a step by step walkthrough of what i need to do to make sure most everything transfers over to Linux as much as possible. There are a few windows features (Wordpad, and the rarely seen Word Processor) that are the most important, and few other things i hope to make the transfer over.
Any help is appreciated! Whats the best version i need?

Edit 1: I use Wireless Xbox One controllers. I've been told i may need to mess with something Bluetooth related to get that to work? Is this true? Who else games on Linux this way though Steam, what did you do?

Edit 2: Here is some of the Tech details i have.

Processor; Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10600K CPU @ 4.10GHz 4.10 GHz

Installed RAM; 16.0 GB (15.9 GB usable)

Storage; 466 GB SSD CT500P5SSD8, 932 GB SSD Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB

Graphics Card; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER (6 GB)

My OS: Ubuntu 24.04 Wayland GNOME My Monitor: UWQHD 3440×1440

X GNOME Display Settings do not support 1720x720. X

1. My Ubuntu GNOME Display Settings (Integer HiDPI) is at 200%: The game runs at 3440×1440. The graphics are good, but the game is too slow and the FPS is low.

2. My Ubuntu GNOME Display Settings (Fractional Scaling, HiDPI) is at 200%: The game runs at 1720×720. The game is fast and the FPS is high, but the graphics are a mess and the fonts are distorted to the point of being unbearable.

What about a 4K monitor? If I use a 4K monitor, lower the GNOME resolution to FHD (1920×1080), and then play the game, will the graphic quality be good?

Hey everyone, first of all, good morning!

I want to share again a project i have been working on for a while as it has a new release, 1.3.0:

volt-gui, its a graphical interface for configuring GPU, CPU, Disk, and Kernel performance settings on Linux. It started as something i made for myself and a few friends, but after realizing it could actually help more people, i decided to open-source it a while ago.

Basically, think of it as a Linux alternative to AMD Adrenaline or NVIDIA Control Panel. Additionally because Linux lacks some of the settings that those tools provides on Windows , I decided to include more than just GPU options, all in one place.

Some of the main things it can do:

• CPU Management: select governors, adjust CPU frequencies (within the safe range), manage schedulers (requires scx and Linux Kernel ≥ 6.12).
• GPU Configuration: supports both Mesa and NVIDIA drivers, dynamic device selector for OpenGL/Vulkan, MangoHud and lsfg-vk integration.
• The dynamic device selector for OpenGL and Vulkan works differently from the usual approach of setting generic environment variables like for settings like “AMD GPU” or “NVIDIA GPU.” Instead, it detects your available devices and dynamically sets the environment variables needed for each one. So far, it has worked excellently with combinations like an NVIDIA GPU with an AMD iGPU, an AMD GPU with an AMD iGPU, or an Intel GPU with an AMD iGPU. (It requires vulkaninfo and glxinfo though).
• Disk Configuration: change disk schedulers.
• Kernel Parameters: tweak CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, and Security related kernel parameters.
• Profiles and Launch Options: you can have multiple profiles with different settings, and apply those settings from the program itself or from the systray (the system tray is disabled by default, so its opt-in).

Here are some pictures:

https://preview.redd.it/7b17oakx83uf1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=b94925de3df05bf02a512c45f1bad2d5dce59453

https://preview.redd.it/wwqdxeoy83uf1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d5d6b4912f9a7e4d3a0b72ff0d93552666c3585

https://preview.redd.it/ojjm4tnz83uf1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f03a4bafdde76a3e8d94372ce5c6579f7b70e7f

Once you install volt-gui, it wont look exactly like this, because most settings (except the Welcome Window) are disabled by default. Following the opt-in approach for all options in the Options tab, you can obviously change everything and leave it configured like i have it here :).

If you’re curious or want to try it out, check out the repo here:
https://github.com/pythonlover02/volt-gui

Hey guys,

I’ve been having a weird issue lately. Some old games just refuse to launch — games like Mirror’s Edge, Gothic 2, or Gothic 3. I click play, Steam says it’s running for a second or two, and then... nothing.

Newer and way more demanding titles like The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and Dying Light: The Beast all run flawlessly.

Logs: https://pastebin.com/xWir4Bvk

Anyone else running into this on newer AMD cards or Fedora 43?

My setup:

• GPU: Radeon RX 9070 XT
• OS: Fedora 43 KDE Edition
• mesa: 25.2.4
• vulkan: apiVersion = 1.4.318 (4211006)
• proton: GE-10-17 , 7.0.6 , 8.0.5
• kernel: Linux 6.17.1-300.fc43.x86_64
  

Now im not sayin the online portions of course, i mean their respective singleplayer modes like battlefield 4/1/5 and such, or is it hard coded across all platforms for the anti cheat as a requirement to boot the exe? as from what i hear gog allows players to launch their games with drm free no matter what

Hello, I have decided to switch to Linux mint (windows 11 was starting to piss Mr off compared to how nice windows 10 was) but I'm worried about launching steam games. I know about proton and most games I play have native Linux support, but I play a lot of warframe and after searching it I found some people have errors when playing. Does any have any experience with warframe on linux and If so how well does it work?? And how do I get it working on steam??

Hello, guys. My wife has been using Bazzite + KDE for a while now, but recently (around 2 weeks or so) she's been having issues with Marvel Rivals. She's tried a few Proton builds (Experimental, GE, and CachyOS), but for some reason, the game freezes her system after a while (2+ matches some times takes a little more time). I wasn't able to find anything related to drivers via journalctl, so I'm reaching out to see if anyone else has experienced this issue.

Edit: She's using an AMD GPU.

aight so i got ZZZ up and running on lutris with the hoyoplay client, and i mean sure the game does look good, but its nothing insane, changing the rendering option from 1.0 to 0.8 helps, but then the game looks bad, i think it should run much better without resorting to the settings too much

specs are: asrock challenger rx 6600 8GB ryzen 5 5500 8GB ddr4 2133mhz game is installed on a hard drive

so has anyone else gotten consistent, above 60fps performance with similar specs or is the game just poorly optimized?

Sorry for the cut video, OBS is another issue I’ll have to solve later on linux. As you can see in the video, I’m experiencing a strange problem with choppy frames, but only when frame generation is enabled in Cyberpunk 2077. The issue is exclusive to Cyberpunk, it works as expected in The Witcher 3, Indiana Jones and other titles.

Things I’ve already tried:

• Different distros (Linux Mint and now Arch with Omarchy flavor);
• Different GPU drivers (started around version 575 I think);
• Different Cyberpunk builds (Steam and GOG versions);
• Switching between HDMI and DP cables;
• Enabling and disabling VRR in both system and monitor settings;
• Torturing LLMs with the same question with no luck.

So you guys are my last hope to solve this.

Could someone explain simply the situation with FSR / FSR 3 and Linux implementation and how to enable / check it's working.

If understand Steam has FSR 1 already implemented through proton but for FSR 3 this isn't a system wide option it has to be implemented on a game by game basis and the game has to support it?

I only ask because playing STALKER 2 on steam with experimental proton the FSR 3.1 option is greyed out and I wondered how to enable it?

Now, to be fair I'm getting 70fps on ultra settings while running on a 3840x1600 resolution ultra wide but I'm concerned with GPU temps and how to scale things back a bit.

Do I need anything more than latest mesa drivers to implement FSR 3.1? Do I need GE version of proton or anything else for example? Are there specific launch commands in steam I need to enter for each game? I can't seem to find a simple guide that covers this.

Current system:

Fedora KDE 42 Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 907O XT Ryzen7 7800X3D Mesa version 25... Something (can't remember!)

Any guidance greatly appreciated.

Hi guys! It's my first time asking here so be gentle with me. So about a month ago I was trying to run wuwa on linux. It gets me pass through the login and even got in game. I wasn't satisfied with the performance (stuttering and lagging), when I tried it on windows it runs buttery smooth, well at least on my hardware. So I back into windows for a while, only for wuwa.

Today, I want to give it a shot one more time but I stumbled into different issue. When I was about to login, I cannot accept the Terms of Service screen because it shows nothing. I tried to click the close button but it asks me to login again (of course). So does anybody has the same issue with me? And maybe if somebody has the workaround please tell me. Thanks!

My setup:

OS: latest NixOS with latest Hyprland
Runner: Bottles with Proton-GE 10-17
Hardware: ASUS TUF A15 FA506IC (Ryzen 7 4800H, RTX3050, 32GB RAM)

This is the blank screen that I'm talking about